1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to packaging of solid members having extended rigid projections, particularly electrical connectors, in a flexible substrate assembly by inserting the extending projections into a surface of a continuous flexible support sheet. The present invention also is directed to an article of manufacture comprising an elongated sheet of flexible polymeric material having a plurality of electrical connectors removably secured to the polymeric sheet material by insertion of extending conductors of the connectors into the flexible sheet material. The plurality of electrical connectors having extending conductors inserted into the flexible sheet material can be cut to a predetermined length while secured to the flexible sheet material. Further, the present invention is directed to folding or bending the sheet material having a plurality of electrical connectors secured thereto in a boustrophedon pattern, or winding the flexible sheet material and attached connectors to form a stacked array for transport. The invention is further directed to a package containing a plurality of continuous elongated sheets of flexible material having the electrical connectors removably secured thereto.
2. Background of the Invention and Prior Art
Electrical connectors are mass produced by positioning an insulative housing, generally a plastic rectangularly shaped member, automatically at various locations along an assembly line for pin insertion and other machine accomplished steps until the electrical connector is in its final manufactured form. Once the electrical connector is completed, the connectors are automatically conveyed to a completed connector hopper positioned to receive the connectors from a conveyor so that the completed connectors fall one by one into the hopper where they fall upon each other. The completed connectors falling upon each other sometimes cause damage to the extending pins or conductors such as by causing some of the plated-on highly conductive metal to be scraped away from the conductors or pins or by bending the pins.
The connectors are manually removed from the hopper, one by one, inspected and manually packaged. Packaging the connectors can be done in bulk by filling a plastic bag or other suitable container with a number of connectors in contact with each other in a random manner, but bulk packaging generally is unsuitable because many of the connectors are damaged during transport. Another more time consuming and expensive method of packaging connectors has been by manually aligning the connectors in layers in a suitable container, such as a cardboard box, to minimize the connector contact during storage. A layer of compressible material sometimes is disposed between each layer of hand packed connectors to minimize the damage to the connectors during transport.
Recently, the assignee of this application has packaged connectors by aligning the connectors longitudinally in plastic tubes so that the connectors come into contact with each other only at plastic housing ends so that the conductors or pins extending from the connector housings do not contact each other during transport.
Another prior art method of packaging connectors has been to provide individual support trays having individual recesses shaped generally to conform to the profile configuration of an individual connector so that each connector is packaged in its own individual recess of a tray and a compressible sheet of material can be layered over the tray to minimize the possibility of the packaged connectors contacting each other during transport. This method of packaging, of course, is extremely expensive, requires a great amount of packaging space to package a small number of connectors, and each connector must be manually packed.
It is believed that some electrical circuit elements, such as transistors, have been packaged by inserting the extending conductors into a rigid foam block, such as styrofoam, in a single layer requiring a massive amount of packaging space for only a few circuit elements. For shipment, the layer of circuit elements must be held into the styrofoam block with a contacting pressure layer of packaging material to prevent the circuit elements from falling out of the styrofoam during transport.